What cannot end, if it never starts?

Matt
Sep 14, 2025
12 min read

Updated: May 15

A Warhammer Fantasy Sphinx Project

Springpaw Lions Necrosphinx, the messenger of time

Every hobby project has a spark, a single idea that refuses to let go. For me, it was the Sphinx.

A few models had been around for years, released for Tomb Kings in the form of the Necrosphinx, later carried into Age of Sigmar with what I call the High Elves, then sometime after that War-cry got a model. I had picked them all up and like so many side project, they had sat collecting dust in the garage. However, a good few weeks ago, I had painted the last of my Thousand Sons sat in the paint queue (I've since added more) and looked about to see what to have a crack at next.

You see, my random collection of Sphinx models had always presented one major challenge. How do I incorporate them into a single army? I had toyed with the idea of some Tzeentchian 40k army but the more I looked into Sphinxes in the Fantasy Battle universe (or rather the lack of them), the more I released what these custodians of time could represent. A rewind and reset of the End Times.

As much as I love that Warhammer Fantasy is back in the form of The Old World, there is still something that gnaws at me. Canonically, the End Times still happens. All that lore, all that world-building, undone in fire and silence. I wanted to find a way to unpick that ending, to create my own answer to Chaos’s victory.

And so, the Sphinx Project was born.

My version of the Sphinxes are more than constructs of stone and bone. They are ancient guardians of time itself, stirring in the world’s final breath and turning it back, one cycle earlier. Their return is not conquest but correction, the chance to rewrite fate, to restore balance, and to ask the ultimate riddle: must the End Times always come?

This is also a painting and modelling journey. My first Sphinx is finally finished, rebuilt onto a proper fantasy base, patched with milliput, and painted as a centrepiece for an army that blends converted kits with custom lore. It was not an easy start, especially painting such a large model second-hand and fully assembled, but it was worth the challenge.

This blog will follow that journey. The lore of the Sphinxes. The models I paint and convert along the way, including, I think, High Elves that have thrown their lot in with guardians of time. And perhaps, a different ending for the Old World.

The riddle begins here.

✦ Prologue: The Eyes in the Dark ✦

Somewhere at the end of time...

The world burned.

Ash drifted like snow across the battlefield, scorched remnants of banners, bones, men. The sky above was wrong, bleeding colourless fire, the stars smeared like oil across a cracked dome. The stench of the warp was overwhelming. Like rotten meat and burnt sugar.

Karl Franz stood amidst the dying throes of his Empire. Ghal Maraz hung heavy in his hand, once a symbol of his dominion, not a relic of a bygone era. The Winds of Magic howled through tears in reality, bleeding into the world with unnatural force. The veil between realms was gone, torn like parchment in the hands of madmen.

His armour steamed with blood. His limbs ached beyond reason. The cries of men, once deafening, had become a dull undertone, the final notes of a song nearly forgotten.

He knew then: they had failed.

All the stories told. All the banners raised. All the years they believed meant something, ash. A world built on legends and sacrifice, undone not by courage, but by greed. In the absence of their creators, the ambitions of lesser men fanned the winds of destruction.

Flames roared higher, casting twisted shadows across his vision, and then...

Nothing.

A stillness so total it felt like blasphemy. The world, and himself, hung in stasis. The Moment Between Moments

He was suspended. No weight. No time. No breath. There was no battlefield beneath his feet. No Empire behind him. No Chaos before him. Only a cold, infinite dark and the distant spec of starlight.

A purgatory of memory and sensation. Thought drifted like fog. His identity unravelled, then recoiled. He felt the presence before he saw it. Something watching him. Not with malice. Not with mercy. Just observation, total and ancient.

Judgement.

The hairs on the back of his neck rose. His skin bristled, as if touched by unseen fingers. His thoughts turned to prayers he could no longer remember. Something old stirred in the dark, older than Chaos. Older than gods. A stillness that was not peace, but order. Something vast and feline and unknowable curled around him in silence.

His chest tightened. His existence became unbearable, a paradox wound too tight.

He tried to scream. There was no breath. Then he saw eyes. Piercing. Immense. Reflecting stars that no longer existed. Set in a face like a mask, silver and lapis, sculpted and divine. Wings spread wide behind it, feathered, but made of light and shadow in equal measure. They formed a crescent shape that seemed both alien and familiar.

There was no sound. Only understanding. No name. Only recognition. The gaze of the Sphinx held him. Measured him and then, the darkness was swallowed by a flash of light.

Altdorf, Year 2518 of the Imperial Calendar

He awoke gasping, bolting upright, heart hammering like a war drum. His chambers were silent, save for his ragged breathing. The velvet sheets clung to sweat-drenched skin. Moonlight spilled through the stained-glass windows, soft and cold.

For a moment, he simply sat, disoriented, hollow, changed. Then he moved, urgently, instinctively, to the window.

The city lay before him. Intact. Quiet. The Reik flowed beneath moonlit bridges. Scribes lit lanterns in the university halls. Bell towers stood. Statues unbroken.

Altdorf lived. Just as he remembered it. Before…...Before?

He pressed a hand to the windowpane. It felt too real, too solid. As if the world itself was trying too hard to convince him of its truth. And still, something was missing. He tried to remember, truly remember, what had come before. But the memories scattered like ashes in a gale. Each time he reached for them, they tore like wet parchment. Slipping from his grasp.

Every waking moment, the truth of what had transpired eluded him, like the final details of a dream recalled too long after waking. There was the weight of something vast behind his eyes. A pressure. A silence. Something waiting to be remembered.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Flashes came: fire without heat. A silver mask. Eyes like dying stars. And then, nothing again.

He turned away from the window and rang the bellpull beside the bed. Eventually, the heavy oak door creaked open and a sleepy-faced servant shuffled in, half-dressed, rubbing his eyes.

“Y-your Majesty? Forgive me, I ”

Karl Franz waved him silent, studying the steward’s face.

Fetch the court physician. Tell them… I’ve had a dream.”

The boy bowed and disappeared into the hall.

Karl Franz remained motionless, staring at the doorway long after it had closed. He remembered nothing of his death. Nothing of the nightmare. But the ache remained. A pressure in the bones. A feeling that something ancient had touched him. Measured him. Returned him.

And far above the Reik, on a rooftop where no shadow should fall, a Sphinx watched.

14th of September, 2025

This is my first painted Sphinx for Warhammer Fantasy, though the model itself is from Age of Sigmar. Like most of my AoS purchases, it’s been repurposed into something that fits the Old World.

The biggest obstacle was fitting the model onto a proper fantasy base. That meant cutting down the big scenic base it came with and rebuilding the missing section with milliput. Turned out better than I expected!

Hysh, the Borealis of Waiting

Painting a centrepiece like this takes time, but the hardest part wasn’t the paintjob, it was holding the thing. In general, I find the closer you can hold to the area you’re painting, the less it wobbles around. Holding a model this size by the base just doesn’t cut it. These days I paint in sections and assemble later, but since I bought this second-hand, I didn’t have that luxury.

All in all, I’m really pleased with how it turned out. One down… and many more riddles yet to come.

I - Deja-Vu and the Death of Destiny

The world turns, and ends. Turns, and ends.

The End Times has happened. Will happen again. Is happening.

The Sphinxes have walked these paths before. Their presence is the chill you feel when nothing is wrong. The dream you swear is real. The stranger you know without knowing. The riddle half-remembered.

They are not gods, though they are worshipped. Not daemons, though magic born. Not dead, but never-born.

They are the riddle of being, the rare, ordered stillness in the churning madness of the Aethyr. A force that opposes entropy not through power, but through remembrance.

Some say they are the last dream of the Old Ones. Others, the first question ever asked.

Aqshy, the Conflagration of Impatience

15th of May 2026

So I finally got around to painting my second Sphinx. This time it’s the Mindstealer Sphiranx from Age of Sigmar, combined with some old griffon wings I managed to track down on eBay. I have to say, finding feathered wings was a real challenge. There are plenty of bat-like wings available, but proper feathered ones were surprisingly difficult to source for this project.

The aim with this model was to make it a complete contrast to the previous white Sphinx. I want each of the Sphinxes to embody one of the Winds of Magic from the Fantasy Battle universe, with this one representing Aqshy, the Wind of Fire.

Not going to lie, my motivation took a bit of a hit after finishing this model. Right now, the two Sphinxes don’t really look like a coherent force, and I’m worried the army might end up feeling like a jumbled mess once it’s all together. Hopefully the more uniform infantry will help tie everything together over time.

II - The False Death of the Sphinx

Khemri knew of them. Not truly. Not clearly. But enough.

They built Necrosphinxes in imitation, towering constructs of lapis, stone, and soul. They bound echoes of lesser Sphinxes within, drawn unwillingly into golden prisons. Even now, with the world fractured, those Necrosphinxes stir, not from necromantic command, but because something within remembers the end.

But the true Sphinxes are not machines. They are memory, wearing flesh. Their forms shimmer, ethereal yet terrifyingly real, leonine grace, wings like fractured time, voices that echo with truths no tongue should shape.

They did not come to fight.

They came to correct.

✦ The Silent Cycle ✦

A Tale from the Temple-Cities

Lord Mazdamundi stirred upon his palanquin, the soft hiss of the winds brushing the jungle canopy beyond the chamber. The amber glow of the geomantic web flickered behind his closed, heavy-lidded eyes.

The spawning of Chameleon Skinks he had dispatched to Khemri itched at his concentration an irritation he admitted with some reluctance. It had become harder to focus in recent cycles. How many End Times had he now borne witness to? Four? Five? More? He no longer counted. The pattern repeated with mocking certainty. He was certain that he alone remembered what had come to pass. Through meditation he stored the knowledge of the past and unlocked his memory of the future.

What mattered was not when the world ended but why it refused to move on.

Mazdamundi, in his near-immortal patience, had tried countless interventions. At first, he had approached it as one would a misaligned leyline: a forceful correction, an overt gesture. He had tried to warn the lesser races directly, conjuring omens and even speaking in their vulgar tongues.

But the fools... Oh, the fools.

In all his vast mental libraries, no tome held words sharp enough to describe the hubris of men, elves, or even dwarfs. Each attempt ended in failure, each End Time more degenerate, more maddening, than the last. He had learned the hard truth: they must come to the truth themselves.

So he changed tactics. He became subtle.

And in the dust-choked sands of Khemri, he found the only beings that might transcend the loops of time unchanged: the Necrosphinxes. Tomb constructs built in mimicry of something older the true Sphinxes. They had been mistaken as statues, animated by death magic, but Mazdamundi knew better. He had studied their structure, the patterns carved into their flanks. The binding glyphs bore echoes faint and fractured of the Watchers Beyond Time.

A fragment of their purpose lingered.

If such statues returned precisely as they were every cycle, every reset then they could become anchors. Messages. Carriers of prophecy across the tides of time.

And so, the Chameleon Skinks were tasked: mark them. Not with Lizardman glyphs alone no, this time they would carve words and signs in the lesser tongues. That was the real challenge. Teaching skinks the syntax of Reikspeak, Eltharin, Khazalid, and even Queekish had been beneath him... but necessary. Begrudgingly, he embedded it in their spawning.

Still, he doubted. Not in himself but in fate.

The Chaos Champion in this cycle was particularly persistent. The resets were occurring more frequently, closer together. Mazdamundi could feel the wear in the fabric of the world reality stretching thin.

Even he, the venerable First of Hexoatl, was... bored. He had relived the same years too many times. The world refused to break free from the rut. And the longer they remained trapped in this era, the more tenuous the strands became.

With a slow exhale, he returned to his meditation.

There was still time. He hoped.

Mi’tsio blinked sand from his bulbous eye, chittering lowly. He clicked his tongue toward his spawn-brother and followed with an exasperated gesture. The meaning was clear:

"I hate this place."

Am’banja twitched a toe in agreement, then mimicked the gesture for "moisture." He too missed the swamps of Lustria, the warm wet air, the comforting buzz of insects. The dry, endless dunes of the Southlands grated on their skin.

But they had a task. Lord Mazdamundi had been... insistent.

They were to find and mark every feline statue, though neither of them truly knew what "feline" meant anymore. Mi’tsio had forgotten the word's significance after the second week, and Am’banja took pride in reminding him, smugly, that it meant “huge”. The definition helped little.

They’d already scratched glyphs into dozens of statues, many of which, they were sure, had nothing to do with the prophecy. Temples, ruined obelisks, even one suspiciously large rock better to be thorough. Their lord's instructions had been specific, yet maddeningly abstract. “Mark what returns unchanged.” What did that even mean?

Neither skink could say.

They hadn’t seen another pair of their kin in days. Lord Mazdamundi had scattered them far across the deserts in pairs, hunting down the colossi and tracing the required glyphs into their flanks.

With a final glance across the dune, Mi’tsio chirped and began carving again this time in the tongue of Reikspeak, or at least a crude imitation of it.

A message for no one. A riddle for the future. A hope that something might finally notice.

III - The Cults and the Convergence

In the Sphinxes wake, the cults formed. It was the Elves, wisest of all the races to spot the markings left in Khemri and the stone constructs of the NecroSphinx first. Slowly, cabals of Elves adopted the colours of the Necroshphinx, in an attempt to show allegiance with something older than they were. Of course, not all Elves followed suit, the natural arrogance of their race prevented many from even accepting a greater power than themselves.

However, the closer the end times became, the more the Sphinx directly interfered with the lives of mortal races. Soon enough, they curated a following.

Not through doctrine or miracle, but through recognition. Dreams. Waking visions. Riddles written in forgotten alphabets. An ache for something lost before it was born.

High Elf scholars call them the Seraph-Sphinx. In Bretonnia, errant knights bore the crest of starlight and time. Empire soldiers see their shadows in the smoke of war. Even among the Ogres, some wander, chasing sky-lions across mountains, half-mad but smiling.

Dwarfs, ever sceptical, long denied their existence. But Runemasters have seen the broken strands of time. They know this age has passed before, and they forge not weapons, but anchors. Symbols of stillness. Hope.

There is no leader. No empire. No crusade.

Only the knowledge: this cannot happen again.

IV - Magic and Mystery

Sphinxes are not wizards. They are loci.

Winds of Magic follow them like tides pulled by a hidden moon. Most frequently, Sphinxes draw upon the Lore of Heavens, manipulating time, fate, lightning, and stars. They are creatures of the Aethyr, and often appear as anchors or avatars of celestial truth.

But some manifest through Death, balancing the cosmic ledger. These dual Sphinxes, one celestial, one chthonic, may appear together in moments of deep crisis. Their presence is not always benevolent. It is always necessary.

Other Sphinxes have been known to manifest with traits of Light, Shadow, or even Beasts, depending on the needs of the world around them.

Their presence bends probability. Their gaze can unravel prophecy. Their speech, when it comes, carries power.

Those who hear a Sphinx speak directly often weep, or scream, or forget entire years of their life as none can understand what they have seen. The threads they pull to avoid destruction. Friend can turn against foe if it edges the mortal realm closer to breaking the cycle of oblivion.

V - What Are the Sphinxes?

Their nature is hotly debated.

High Elf scholars believe they may be remnants of the will of the Old Ones, reality-shaping entities that guard the rhythm of existence itself.
The Slann are silent. Some believe the Sphinxes are too close to the source, too ancient even for the Slann to control, or perhaps the Sphinxes are what the Slann dream of when they sleep.
To Chaos, they are anathema. Many cultists believe they are daemons of Tzeentch due to their riddle-speech, feathered wings, and unpredictable interference, but they are not agents of change. They are the moment before change. The impossible calm at the heart of the storm.

They do not speak in declarations. They whisper questions. Riddles. Choices.

And they are always watching.

VI - What Comes Next

The Sphinxes have reset the board. But none of their followers know what the next move will be.

They act not from omniscience, but from necessity. They made the same mistake once, withdrawing too long, assuming balance would hold.

Now they intervene.

Not to win.

But to prevent the last loss from becoming the final one.